Social Media

One Twitter User Reports Live From Osama Bin Laden Raid

Without knowing what he was doing, Sohaib Athar, a.k.a. @ReallyVirtual, has more or less just live-tweeted the raid in which terrorist Osama bin Laden was killed Sunday.

The IT consultant resides in Abbottabad, the town where bin Laden was found and killed by a U.S. military operation.

Athar first posted about events surrounding the raid 10 hours before the publication of this article, writing, "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)." He didn't realize that he'd been tweeting about a top-secret attempt to kill an internationally wanted terrorist until nine hours later.

Athar reported that one of the copters he'd heard had crashed and that the aircraft were not Pakistani. We now know that four helicopters had been sent to raid bin Laden's mansion in the town, and one was hit by enemy fire from the ground.

During the raid, Athar speculates that he was two or three kilometers away from the shooting that took place. Once news broke that bin Laden had been killed in Abbottabad, Athar tweeted, "Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it."

Athar further reported that traffic was shut down in some areas, and the army had cordoned off the helicopter crash site.

Yet, he remains humble. "I am JUST a tweeter, awake at the time of the crash. Not many twitter users in Abbottabad, these guys are more into facebook. That's all."

An image of Abbottabad streets, posted by Athar to his Twitpic account to demonstrate how the area he was in had basically been shut down.

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